Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age (63 page)
Read Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age Online
Authors: Susan P. Crawford
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Politics
21.
Craig Moffett, Nicholas Del Deo, Regina Possavino, and Patricia Pan,
U.S. Telecommunications, Cable & Satellite: The Dumb Pipe Paradox, Revisited
(Washington, D.C.: Bernstein Research, June 11, 2009), 19.
22.
Bernstein Research, “U.S. Telecommunications and U.S. Cable & Satellite: Nature Versus Nurture,” May 2012, 105.
23.
FTTH Council, “The Growth of Fiber to the Home,” available at
http://www.ftthcouncil.org/en/content/the-growth-of-fiber-to-the-home
; “Media Solutions Strategies,”
Thrive
, accessed March 10, 2012,
http://www.thrivemovement.com/media-solutions-strategies-1
.
24.
John B. Horrigan,
Broadband Adoption and Use in America
, OBI Working Paper Series no. 1 (Federal Communications Commission, February 2010), available at
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_/files/06/15/76/f061576/public/attachmatch/DOC-296442A1.pdf
.
25.
Federal Communications Commission, “National Broadband Plan,” 9, 135.
26.
Om Malik, “Finally, 100 Mbps Everywhere (If You Have Comcast),”
GigaOM
, April 14, 2011,
http://gigaom.com/broadband/finally-100-mbps-everywhere-if-you-have-comcast/
.
27.
Mark McDonald, “Home Internet May Get Even Faster in South Korea,”
New York Times
, February 21, 2011, available at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/technology/22iht-broadband22.html
; Vaiva Lazauskaite,
Developments of Next Generation Networks (NGN): Country Case Studies
(Geneva: International Telecommunication Union, 2009), 36–7, 66–68; Karl Bode, “Australia's Labor Party Win, FTTH Build Greenlighted,”
DSLReports.com
, September 8, 2010,
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Australias-Labor-Party-Wins-FTTH-Build-Greenlighted-110255
; Stacey Higginbotham, “BT Openreach Building a 300 Mbps Open Network,”
GigaOM
, October 5, 2011,
http://gigaom.com/broadband/bt-openreach-building-a-300-mbps-open-network/
.
28.
If you subtract capital expenditure (investments in expanding networks) from operating cash flow, you get “free cash flow.” Comcast is spending more than 30 percent of its free cash flow on “return of capital to shareholders,” that is, dividends and buybacks. The telephone companies, AT&T and Verizon, spend 40 percent of free cash flow on dividends and buybacks. Meanwhile, capital expenditures for all of these companies are steadily decreasing as a yearly percentage of revenue. See Bernstein Research, “U.S. Telecommunications and U.S. Cable & Satellite: Nature Versus Nurture,” May 2012.
29.
Comments of the Fiber-to-the-Home Council, In the Matters of International Comparison and Survey Requirements in the Broadband Data Improvement Act, et al.
, Federal Communications Commission, GN Docket No. 09–47 et al., November 6, 2009, 3.
30.
Sharon K. Black,
Telecommunications Law in the Internet Age
(Waltham, Mass.: Morgan Kaufman, 2002), 25.
31.
Ron Chernow,
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr.
(New York: Vintage, 2004), 553.
32.
Marguerite Reardon, “FCC Unveils National Broadband Plan,”
CNET News
, March 15, 2010,
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20000453-266.html
; Jil Nishi, Deputy Director, U.S. Libraries, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary to the Federal Communications Commission, October 5, 2009,
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7020040706
;
FTTH Deployment Assessment
(Boston: CSMG, October 13, 2009), available at
http://s.ftthcouncil.org/files/ftth_deployment_assessment_-_corning_10_12_09_final.pdf
.
33.
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “Increases and Decreases to Discretionary Spending in the President's Budget,”
The Bottom Line
(blog), February 15, 2011,
http://crfb.org/blogs/increases-and-decreases-discretionary-spending-presidents-budget
;
The Budget for the Fiscal Year of
2012: Department of Defense
(Washington, D.C.: Office of Management and Budget), 64, accessed March 10, 2012, available at
http://m.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/defense.pdf
; “Simplified FTTH Installation Brings Increased Job Possibilities at Reduced Costs,” paper presented at the FTTH Conference and Expo, Orlando, Florida, September 26–30, 2011, 3, available at
http://www.m2fx.com/wordpress_m2fx/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/m2fx_FTTH_Council_Whitepaper_2011.pdf
.
34.
Sen. Al Franken, interview with the author, September 30, 2010.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to several generations of students from several different schools, including Keith Klovers, Olivia Greer, Michael Steffen, Anjali Dalal, Eric Null, Shane Wagman, Hanna Siegel, and Daniel Goldmintz. Special thanks to Clay Risen, Representative Ed Markey, Senator Al Franken, Colin Crowell, and the dozens of people from across the media and telecommunications landscape in America who talked to me but did not want their names used in this book.
INDEX
Abbott, Ernest Hamlin,
(i)
Abernathy, Kathleen,
(i)
Aggregators in online video,
(i)
Amalgamated Copper,
(i)
American Cable Systems (early name of Comcast),
(i)
America Online.
See
AOL
Anderson, Henry,
(i)
Antitrust: Microsoft litigation,
(i)
; railroad industry,
(i)
.
See also
AOL–Time Warner; Justice Department; Sherman Antitrust Act; Vertical mergers and integration;
specific headings starting with “Merger”
AOL: as dial-up service,
(i)
; early success of,
(i)
; separated from Time Warner,
(i)
; vulnerability of,
(i)
,
(ii)
AOL–Time Warner: benefits of,
(i)
; Comcast and NBCU merger compared to,
(i)
,
(ii)
; in failed vertical merger,
(i)
,
(ii)
; hailed as symbol of new era,
(i)
; losses recorded by,
(i)
; mismatch of corporate styles,
(i)
,
(ii)
; negative predictions about merger,
(i)
; and online video,
(i)
; pricing to allow open access,
(i)
Arango, Tim,
(i)
Arbitration,
(i)
AT&T: acquiring and divesting Western Union,
(i)
; and Apple devices,
(i)
; attempt to get into local phone markets,
(i)
; and auctions of low-frequency spectrum,
(i)
; Broadband Internet Access Policy Statement, agreement to,
(i)
; cable and Internet divisions bought by Comcast,
(i)
,
(ii)
; in cellphone market,
(i)
; cooperation with Comcast not to compete head to head,
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
; Digital One flat rate,
(i)
; divestiture (1984),
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
; ending unlimited data plans,
(i)
; lobbying in opposition to FCC control of Internet access,
(i)
; market share of cable industry,
(i)
; market share of wireless industry,
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
; Modified Final Judgment (MFJ, 1984) and,
(i)
; monopoly power of (1970s and 1980s),
(i)
; pay-TV business attempt of,
(i)
; pole-attachment control,
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
; pricing,
(i)
,
(ii)
; purchase of TCI,
(i)
; reverse billing proposed by,
(i)
; seeking release from obligation to provide phone service to all Americans,
(i)
; and usage-based billing,
(i)
,
(ii)
; wireline compared to wireless business,
(i)
.
See also
Merger of AT&T and TMobile; Wireless access
Auctions of additional spectrum for digital communications,
(i)
Auletta, Ken,
(i)
Baby Bells,
(i)
Baker, Jonathan,
(i)
Baker, Meredith Attwell,
(i)
Baldrige, Malcolm,
(i)
Baran, Paul,
(i)
“Baseball arbitration,”
(i)
Baxter, William,
(i)
Bell Canada,
(i)
Bell System,
(i)
,
(ii)
,
(iii)
,
(iv)
,
(v)
.
See also
AT&T; Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs)
Benkler, Yochai,
(i)
Bennahum, David,
(i)
Bernstein Research: on agreement of Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon to joint market,
(i)
; on cable market size,
(i)
; on Comcast's wealth,
(i)
; on failure to have national plan for telecommunications,
(i)
; on NBC's faltering programming,
(i)
; on reverse billing proposal of AT&T,
(i)
Beyers, Tim,
(i)
Bissinger, Buzz,
(i)
Black, Hugo,
(i)
Black Family Channel,
(i)
“Block booking,”
(i)
Bloomberg, Michael,
(i)
Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television
(Parsons),
(i)
Bock, Paul,
(i)
Born, Brooksley,
(i)
Boucher, Rick,
(i)
Boxee,
(i)
Brand X
case (2005),
(i)
Brewer, David J.,
(i)
Britt, Glenn,
(i)
